The midwife mother who strangled her three children appears in court from her hospital bed
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The Massachusetts mother who strangled her three children and then attempted suicide appeared in court virtually today from her hospital bed when her lawyers revealed she is paralyzed.
Lindsay Clancy, 32, is accused of strangling her three children on January 29 at her family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts.
Prosecutors call it a ‘premeditated’ attack, and that she deliberately sent her husband out looking for food before strangling children Cora, five, Dawson, three and Callan, eight months.
However, Clancy’s lawyers say she was severely depressed, suffering from postpartum depression and even psychosis, caused by a cocktail of prescription drugs that turned her into a “shell” of herself and robbed her of her personality and ability to feel emotions. .
Today, prosecutors revealed that the boys were found in the basement of the family home with exercise bands tied around their necks.
They say Lindsay told her husband she heard a ‘man’s voice’ telling her to kill the children and then herself because it was her ‘last choice’.
Clancy remains in the hospital after attempting to take his own life; he slashed his wrists and jumped from the top-story window of his home after strangling his children Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months
Lindsay slashed her wrists and then jumped from her bedroom window, landing in the family’s backyard.
She suffered several spinal fractures and is now a paraplegic, her lawyer said.
‘She’s not well, not at all. She suffered several severe spinal fractures.
He is not expected to recover significant function below that level of the spinal cord.
She is a paraplegic, she cannot move her legs or feel sensations.
She’s not well at all… She’s a paraplegic, she can’t move her legs or feel sensations. She is paralyzed.
She’s paralyzed. She needs significant medical treatment,’ she said, pleading with the court not to jail her and instead allow her to be sent to a medical rehabilitation center.
Clancy’s lawyers say she was overprescribed a cocktail of prescription drugs to treat postpartum depression, turning her into a “zombie.”
In court today, his attorney, Kevin J. Reddington, denied that the attacks were premeditated.
“We all know that this is an individual who is in a desperate medical condition. This woman is a danger to herself. I wonder if she would ever make it to trial.
‘She’s suicidal, she’s extremely emotional. She is unable to express joy, sadness or crying.
Lindsay Clancy with her husband Patrick and their eldest children, Cora, five, and Dawson, three. She
After strangling the children, Lindsay attempted to slit her wrists. She then jumped from a window in the family’s home. Baby Callan, eight months old, died in hospital. Cora and Dawson died at home
She said she was “completely destroyed” by the cocktail of drugs she was prescribed after the birth of her third child.
‘Our society fails miserably in treating women with postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis.
It is “medicate, medicate, medicate”. Take the pills and you’ll see how it works.
Prosecutors tried to undermine her lawyer’s claims that the drugs she was taking prompted her to commit the murders.
They told the court that she had been behaving normally in the days leading up to the incident and had only referred to having mild “postpartum anxiety” in notes found on her iPhone.
They also referred to notes in which she described “resenting” the two older boys because they prevented her from “loving Callan like he was her first baby.”
Prosecutors say she deliberately sent her husband to a take-out restaurant that was far enough from the home to give him time to kill the children.
They also noted that he would have had to strangle each child for several minutes with the exercise bands to stop them breathing.
‘The bands had to have been squeezing their minds for several minutes.
“She could have changed her mind,” they said, calling it a “premeditated” crime with “extreme cruelty.”
Her husband, Patrick, has forgiven her and asks others to do the same.
Clancy’s lawyer previously told a judge that the drugs Lindsay had been prescribed left her feeling like a ‘zombie’.
Investigators are now testing the theory that she might have been suffering from postpartum psychosis.
He also described the ‘horrible’ combination of prescription drugs Lindsay had been given.
Reddington says that between October and January, Clancy was prescribed a dozen medications: Zolpidem, sold under the brand name Ambien, clonazepam, sold under the brand name Klonopin, diazepam, sold under the brand name Valium, fluoxetine, which sold under the brand name Prozac, lamotrigine, sold under the brand name Lamictil, lorazepam, sold under the brand name Ativan, mirtazapine, sold under the brand name Remeron, quetiapine fumarate, sold under the brand name Seroquel, and trazodone .